


Fields of Gold

by Ammar



Category: Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: F/M, Forum: Goldenlake
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-29
Updated: 2017-05-29
Packaged: 2018-11-06 08:40:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11032620
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ammar/pseuds/Ammar
Summary: Aly visits Taybur Sibigat at his estate on Asawang. Mildly AU.





	Fields of Gold

This is the truth, because no matter how Aly deals in lies and deception, her Sight reveals truth from lie, and a spy who lies to herself too often is a bad spy and an especially poor spymaster: it's a game to her. It's about the thrill of cloak and knife; of masks and lies, of whispering dissent, of toppling a regime, and it's a thrill that sets fire to her blood, makes her feel truly alive for the first time since emerging from her Tortallan chrysalis.  
  
In that, Nawat is an excellent match, for he's never been human, and to him, this has always been one game after another - a god's wager - and all child-like wonder and innocence, and never about the cost and the blood and the broken bodies.  
  
And then there's Taybur Sibigat, who used to think this was a game, until they rewrote the rules and a king drowned and they pulled him from the cool, grey waters - the god's waters - and expelled, he took the first breath of the rest of his life, a survivor.  
  


* * *

  
Asawang is beautiful, Aly thinks, but it’s not the sort of thing that belongs in a spymaster’s report. The austere beauty of Asawang: the grey of volcanic rock, the bright, verdant green of the fields and farmland, and the gleaming cerulean necklace of the sea; all of that, even the scent of salt-spray on the air are strictly irrelevant to a spymaster.  
  
She scribbles that down, nevertheless. The sea reminds her of home, for no particular reason, and the homesickness surges up in her guts like the tide, borne on the sea breeze, resonating with the mournful cry of the gulls.  
  
Taybur Sibigat strides through the fields ahead of her, guiding the ox with a steady hand. There are shadows under his eyes, still, from the nights spent in protective custody while the erstwhile-rebellion discussed what was to be done with Taybur Sibigat and the rest of the King’s Guard. Here, though, with a straw hat on his dark curls, sarong hitched up about his thighs, and rich volcanic soil on his callused hands, he looks nothing like the former Captain of the King’s Guard.  
  
If anything, he has much more in common with the grinning raka farmer following alongside with another ox and plough: Hadian, Ari’d called the man.   
  
“You came at a bad time, lady,” Ari informs her. He’s a delight, this wiry raka man with those watchful eyes and a mind like a steel trap, and Aly’s already tried to recruit him into her spy pack, just out of habit, but he’s swiftly rebuffed her, murmuring that he preferred to keep his loyalties uncomplicated: that is to say, to the Sibigat family.  
  
Of course, Aly has expected no less: Taybur Sibigat has proven himself an adept at spycraft, and all things considered, it’s more than a pity that he’s chosen quiet retirement to his family’s estates on Asawang.  
  
“Oh?” Aly asks, raising an eyebrow.  
  
“Planting season,” Ari explains, laconic.  
  
“Does he always do this?” Aly is curious, drinking in the sight of Taybur Sibigat with his sleeves rolled back, shirt stained with sweat, skin tanned from the harsh sun.  
  
“Too many fields,” Ari says. “This one’s important though.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
Ari looks at her, clearly deciding whether to elaborate further. Aly meets his gaze but remains silent; she’s found often enough that people will chatter on, anything in order to fill an uncomfortable silence, but Ari doesn’t seem that sort, and once again, she stifles the reflexive urge to recruit that man into her pack.  
  
“He likes having things to do,” Ari says, at last, evading her question.  
  
Taybur reaches the end of the field and turns the ox about, preparing to plough the next stretch, when he raises a hand to shade his eyes, beneath the brim of his hat. Using her Sight, Aly picks up on the glint of recognition in his eyes.  
  
He doesn’t set aside the plough, though, and she waits patiently until he’s ploughed yet another straight furrow down the field, says something to Hadian, and then walks over to them, greeting Ari with a nod.  
  
There’s something of the Captain still, in the fighter’s grace of his movements, and he accepts Ari’s proferred waterskin with thanks and tips some of it into his mouth. He removes his hat, and the rest of it goes over his head.  
  
“I didn’t know you knew how to wear a sarong,” Aly says, for want of something else. It’s been months, after all, and here in Asawang, it’s as if she’s meeting a stranger for a first time. But then, Taybur breaks out into a boyish grin—infectious, for she’s smiling too—and says, gravely, “Us luarin boys sometimes take a while to get the hang of it. Is it anything urgent?”  
  
Aly shakes her head. “Surprisingly,” she informs him, “Despite the best efforts of practically everyone else, Dove is still holding on to the throne. The formal coronation will happen next month.”  
  
“Good,” Taybur says, immediately, and Aly can’t See any trace of a lie on his face. He’s honestly relieved, and that has to mean something, doesn’t it? “Well, then. If it isn’t urgent, I’d like to finish this stretch before dark. Ari can show you around Asawang, if you’re interested.”  
  
“Aren’t you worried I’ll ferret out every single secret you have on this island of yours?”  
  
Taybur laughs. “What secrets?” he wants to know. He places his hat back on his head, adjusts it until he’s satisfied and turns to return to the ploughing.  
  
He relents enough to add, “It’s good to see you again, Aly.”  
  


* * *

  
  
Taybur looks very much for the wear: his dark curls in tangles, and his tunic and breeches are rumpled and stained. Dark circles ring his eyes—they’ve given him a pallet, but the cell in the palace dungeons isn’t exactly the most welcoming of places. Dark stubble covers his jaw. He cracks the faintest smile as Aly opens the door of his cell. “What have they decided?”  
  
Aly shrugs. “Dove talked to them. You’re free to go.” She throws him a bundle of fresh clothes: a nondescript, loose shirt, and a sarong.  
  
Taybur fumbles but catches the proferred change of clothes. “What of my men?”  
  
“Kept for their own safety,” Aly says, and it isn’t a euphemism at all. The Rittevon line was not thoroughly-hated: only by a very specific segment of the population, and the conspiracy had juggled suspicion of Taybur Sibigat and his men alongside the threat of reprisals for their turning on their fellow guardsmen and surrendering the Grey Palace to the raka forces without so much as a fight. “Some of them were offered the chance to swear an oath to the new Queen.”  
  
Taybur laughs, quietly. “So, do I get this same choice?” His dark eyes are sharp, knowing. “You’ll need trained guards, of course. There’ll be a power vacuum in the Isles for a long while to come—people scrambling to stay with the winning side, whoever that turns out to be.”  
  
Aly says, “Dove doesn’t want an oath.”  
  
Taybur replies—and she can hear the surprise in his voice; tell it from the sudden intake of breath—“And no one talked her out of it?”  
  
“Not on this,” Aly says. Adds a heartbeat later, “I agreed with her.”  
  
“I betrayed the Rittevons,” Taybur says, darkly. And she can see it now: the edge of anger and resentment that had tipped him over the brink, the day they tried to drown him, the day they killed his king.  
  
“I know,” Aly shrugs.  
  
“The wise thing to do would be to take my oath.”  
  
“I know,” Aly agrees.  
  
“This is a game, isn’t it?” Taybur asks, bitterly.  
  
Aly laughs, thinking of the thrill of spycraft, of deception. Of the crows, who fought beside them for a bet—sparklies, they’d said. “Isn’t that what life is?” she asks. “The greatest of all the games being played.”  
  
“Dunevon _died_ for their games and yours,” Taybur snarls, and now that resentment is turned on her, as he surges up to his feet and crosses the cell floor, and his hands are gripping her shoulders, but—  
  
But then he releases her, seems to sag back into himself; he turns away, averts his gaze.  
  
Aly says, a peace offering, “You’d better get changed. I imagine your current lodging leaves much to be desired.”  
  
Taybur’s mouth twists in a tired smile. “I know,” he murmurs, the rage buried as suddenly as it appeared; the mark, of course, of a true professional. “I don’t suppose I get a free meal along with it?”  
  
“After you take a bath and get changed,” Aly says, pointedly.  
  


* * *

  
  
Aly has studied the maps at Dove’s court, but maps can’t capture what it’s like to feel the terrain underneath your feet, and she’s already certain that the Rittevon cartographers have made some mistakes. She’s fairly certain there are more mountains on Kulanggung than the surveys show, which means Dove probably needs to send cartographers throughout the realm to map everything, because if there are mistakes for the maps of Kulanggung, who knows where else the errors might appear?  
  
She’s grown up in the household of the Lioness and Tortall’s foremost spymaster, after all. She knows firsthand how important maps are, to effective military action. A thought occurs to her: maybe they could get the crows to help, or the task could be done from the back of a kudarung. In Tortall, they would have used the services of a mage-surveyor, but well-trained mages are in short supply right now.  
  
Kulanggung is a small island: not in absolute terms, but in relative terms, enough to not even be worth a mention among the major islands of the Copper Isles. It’s also why Aly doesn’t recall much, if at all, of the raka conspiracy operating on Kulanggung. Asawang is an even smaller estate on Kulanggung, bordering the estates of Suryana and Lokabau—looking at the maps, Aly understands why Taybur Sibigat rose to prominence in the King’s Guard.  
  
Because Asawang is so small it’s a political non-entity, of course. The regents must’ve counted on Taybur being sufficiently grateful for his political patronage that his loyalties would lie with them. You didn’t, after all, want a hungry, ambitious man guarding the young king Dunevon. But neither did you want someone with political significance, like the handsome Tomang son: you wanted someone who’d be properly grateful, and very much aware that their political star would only rise so long as you were their patron.  
  
Except that Taybur Sibigat hadn’t been like that. The regents had miscalculated badly, seeing only a promising young officer in the Rittevon Guard, and one with the perfect background.  
  
They’d made the biggest mistake, Aly thinks. They hadn’t developed a profile of Taybur; hadn’t asked Topabaw to do it. They hadn’t realised that Taybur’s fierce loyalty, his sense of duty—could just as easily be turned against them, once he’d sworn to Dunevon.  
  
Unlike Tanair, Asawang doesn’t have a castle: instead, Ari takes her to a moderately-sized manor, nestled in the shadow of the mountains and the solitary volcano, looming in the distance. That, at least, had been on the maps.  
  
Ari shows her to a moderately opulent set of rooms, where he’s already had her belongings moved. Aly touches her bags and grins as she notices the fastenings rebraided—either Ari or his men have a good eye for detail, but she’s used a K’miri reverse luck-knot, and they’ve managed a triple luck-knot, which is impressive but subtly different from the former.  
  
He’s had her belongings searched, then, which Aly has thoroughly expected, and indeed, she’d have been a little disappointed in him if he’d desisted. In fact, the knowledge that Ari is thoroughly professional cheers Aly up enough that she whistles a small tune as she unpacks.   
  


* * *

  
  
Dinner is in a small room, with a view of the distant fields and valley; painted a fierce red-gold in the light of the setting sun. A few paintings hang on the walls: all ochres and browns and ambers, Aly notices. Muted, deep colours, with the occasional striking shade of gold amongst the maroon and earthern hues.  
  
”Do you like it?” Taybur asks. She conceals her surprise—she doesn’t always allow herself to be startled like this, but she’d been lost in thought, taking in her surroundings, that Taybur’s entrance had genuinely taken her by surprise.  
  
He’s clearly had a chance to change and take a bath: now, he’s wearing a dark shirt and breeches, and those dark curls are still damp. Aly will admit this: the shirt flatters the hard, toned muscle of his chest, and she knows girls—and boys!—back home who’d fall for this, and fall hard. Taybur, after all, has been a fighter for a good amount of his life and it _shows_.  
  
“No sarong?” Aly needles him, feeling mischievous.  
  
Taybur grins. “It’s not that hot, up here in the highlands,” he replies. “And it gets cooler in the evenings. Planting, though—that’s hot, sweaty work, and I’m happy for all the air I can get down there.”  
  
“Ari mentioned that you get bored,” Aly says. She can see the wariness rise in his eyes and body when she speaks of boredom, but Taybur seizes on the topic nonetheless.  
  
“I was always the restless one, growing up. I needed to be out there, doing something. Usually, that meant work in the fields, or at the forge, or learning weaponwork.”  
  
He’s the opposite of Alan, Aly realises, thinking of her twin. Alan was always the quiet one; the one content to go with the flow and allow life to sweep him along with it. She’s slightly surprised to hear he’s gone to train as a page since her absence. Another question she’s yet to ask her family.  
  
They exchange news over dinner: freshly-caught fish baked in sambal that’s—thankfully—more tangy than spicy, a rich beef soup that reminds Aly of home, perhaps because it _hasn’t_ been heavily-seasoned and is more savoury than anything else, starchy sago-flatcakes, and greens in a sweet peanut sauce.   
  
Taybur asks after affairs in Rajmuat with a studied carefulness: he doesn’t ask about the Queen’s Guard, and Aly doesn’t tell him of them. Instead, she speaks of the plans for the upcoming coronation, and only a little of the ongoing strife.  
  
Taybur’s shrewd enough to read through the lines, though, and more than once, she catches him studying her over the rim of his wineglass, with a thoughtful frown on his face. He asks questions that draw more and more information out of her, and really, Aly is aware of this, but she occasionally relents, because it’s so delightful to be talking again with one of the only other people in the Isles she’s regarded as an equal: Taybur grasps spycraft with a deep, instinctual understanding that outstrips whatever training he claims to have had in the Rittevon Guard, and it’s been too long since she’s played against someone else.  
  
They talk briefly of Nawat—“Away putting down a plantation rebellion in Tongkang,” Aly explains, and Taybur only nods, as if he’d expected that, before drawing her into conversation about the long and painful process of consolidating Dove’s power—and the gains made by the raka conspiracy.  
  
“It isn’t easy, is it?” he says, at last, pouring a little more dark wine in her glass. (“An Imahyn vintage,” he says, when she asks. She mentions she never figured him for a drinking man, and Taybur smiles. “It keeps some things away,” he replies, his voice mild, and her mind flashes at once to Dunevon. “And it’s more accurate to say I don’t drink _on duty_.” But of course, he isn’t on duty any longer—hasn’t been, since Fesgao relieved him both of duty and command.)  
  
Aly arches an eyebrow. “I don’t think we ever expected it to be,” she replies.  
  
“Not you,” Taybur says. “You’re knee-deep in this sort of thing. But I’m sure none of them expected that taking the Copper Isles was the easy part. It’s keeping it together—in one whole piece under Queen Dovesary—that’s difficult. They all thought being the twice-royal of the Kyprish Prophecy was enough.”  
  
“And you didn’t?” Aly is curious.  
  
He shakes his head. “Not with Dunevon,” he says, and a ghost of that sorrow, ever-present, flickers across his face. “And not with Dovesary Balitang.”  
  
“Why?”  
  
“Luarin,” Taybur says, a seeming tangent. “A strange word. Where do you think it came from?”  
  
“Kyprish,” Aly replies, promptly. She understands, of course. The luarin didn’t simply conquer: for all Rittevon of Lenman had left an enormous, bloody stain on the history of the Copper Isles, the luarin had assimilated, too. They’d learned to speak Kyprish, and adopted raka food and architecture. The assimilation had not been complete, of course, but both raka and luarin were too deeply changed, too closely-connected, to be able to disentangle their interactions. “But the divisions run deep. That can’t be denied either.”  
  
“No one would deny that,” Taybur says. “Except perhaps the regents. But that’s the point—for all the apparent division, you can’t divide the Isles into raka and luarin and expect everyone to fall in behind your neatly-drawn lines. Luarin fought with your conspiracy.”  
  
“I know,” Aly says, just a trifle annoyed. “I did talk them into working with the luarin after all. They didn’t want to.”  
  
“Exactly,” comes Taybur’s response. “That’s why you see it. That’s why _they_ don’t. To them, there’s no reason for raka to fight raka. They don’t understand that some raka nobles see the god’s prophecy as poetic license, as the sort of thing the commoners would believe. And they wonder why the Kurimin continue to resist. The Kurimin don’t see the twice-royal. They see an empty throne for the taking, and a figurehead Queen who’s a teenage girl.”  
  
He sets his glass down on the polished wooden table. A house servant has come in to kindle the fireplace as dying light from the window becomes too faint to rely on, and in the flickering firelight, Aly notices the legs of the table are intricately carved to resemble roses twining about them, each petal and thorn rendered in careful detail.  
  
Raka woodwork, that.   
  
A comfortable silence falls into place between them, and grows, and stretches out, like a housecat before a roaring fire, even as more servants bring in the dessert: fresh fruit, and palm syrup-filled starch-dumplings, sprinkled with grated coconut.   
  
Eventually, Taybur stirs—he hasn’t touched the last of the wine, Aly notices—and asks, directly, “Why did you come?”  
  
“Maybe I found myself pining for you,” Aly teases.  
  
Taybur grins. “Enough to steal a royal kudarung?” he wants to know.  
  
Aly pretends to consider it. “Possibly,” she says. “The courier jacket was just an added touch, for verisimilitude.”  
  
“And should I be expecting royal guests anytime soon, then?”  
  
Aly shakes her head, sadly. “You have _such_ faith in my abilities.”  
  
“What terrifies me,” Taybur says, conversationally, “Is the thought you might _actually_ have done it, too.”  
  
Aly flashes him a smile that’s all teeth. “I like to make sure people have the proper respect for my skills, after all.”  
  
She isn’t sure why she doesn’t just tell him—outright—why she’s here. Ari will have found no sign of a royal decree among her belongings; only the odds and ends a traveler might need. Perhaps it’s the deep instincts of a spymaster, again. She thinks again of her Da’s lessons: “You can’t rush them,” George Cooper says. “Sometimes, you need to give people time to think, to come around. Rushin’ them only startles them, like fish, and then they start leapin’ in every direction except the one you want them to go in.”  
  
It had been a lesson about catching trout with her bare hands, except Aly’d later realised it’d also been a veiled lesson about the cultivating of a spy’s sources; a double-lesson, as many of those with George Cooper had turned out to be.  
  


* * *

  
  
Aly clucks reproachfully as she searches the bodies on the floor of the throne room. Already, Dove has gone—with a detachment of trusted guards, of course—to summon the servants and slaves for cleaning.   
  
Blood puddles on the floor of the throne room. “Really,” she says to Fesgao. “I know you were awfully busy, but could you try to leave one _alive_ the next time?”  
  
Fesgao grunts as he nudges at one of the fallen with the flat of his thick-bladed raka sword. “You want the Queen alive or you want them to talk?”  
  
Aly sighs. “Must it be one or the other?” she demands, rifling through the corpses pockets. She recognises the tattooed markings on one of them, thanks to her extensive education—they’re from an obscure raka cult. The other one appears to be luarin, with no indication of the lord he serves. The calluses on his hands, though, tell Aly that he’s a fighting man. And if they’d slipped past Dove’s security—not that it’s much to speak of—then they must be professionals of some sort.  
  
“Sometimes,” Fesgao says, grimly, “You have to choose.”  
  
And the truth is, Aly knows that. Holding back and aiming to disable rather than kill can be a weakness, especially when Fesgao and the mixed raka-and-luarin bodyguards have been trained as fighters first and bodyguards a distant fifth. It’s obvious enough to those who can read the truth in Fesgao’s movements, in the way he fights.  
  
Later: when the throne room has been cleaned, and the bodies taken away for investigation by Ysul and the other mages, and sweet, fragrant herbs burned for purification, Dove turns to her and says, conversationally, “He’s right, you know.”  
  
It’s a sudden statement, and one that Aly wasn’t expecting. “About?” she asks.  
  
Dove looks exceptionally small in the dyed garments of state, the batik still stained with a little blood where the assassin’s knife knicked her. “I’m fine,” she says, brushing it off when she notices the direction of Aly’s gaze. “You can’t babysit me all the time—you have other things to take care of, and the healers already checked it. I’m lucky—” a sardonic edge here, “—the blade wasn’t poisoned.”  
  
“There are too many poisons,” Aly says. “If they were really well-supplied, a scratch from that could have killed you.”  
  
“I don’t feel lucky,” Dove says, baldly. And there it is. “Not with Radin down. He threw himself at the assassin to save me, you know. Otherwise I might have died, anyway.”  
  
“You lived,” Aly replies. “That’s lucky enough, for me, and don’t try to argue.”  
  
Dove makes a face. “What’s the point of being a Queen if you can’t win an argument?” she wants to know, and Aly laughs.  
  
“Not with your spymaster, at any rate. Or your bodyguards.”  
  
But Aly is thinking of something else: of Fesgao, when he admits that he’s a fighter and a general, not a bodyguard, and that rebellions are blossoming all over the Copper Isles and that this is the fifteenth time someone’s made an attempt on Dove’s life, and they haven’t even crowned her formally yet.  
  


* * *

  
The next day, Taybur returns to the task of ploughing the fields and planting, alongside Hadian. At first, Aly watches him, worrying at the reason she’d come, like a loose tooth. Does it make a difference, she wonders, if he’s clearly happy and content where he is, with dirt under his nails, explaining (to Hadian’s amusement) the importance of their new crop?  
  
”Most of the fields on Asawang are tubers,” Taybur explains. “Yam, tapioca, with the plots of wild sago and cultivated sago. We don’t really eat rice here, because otherwise, we’d have to import it from somewhere like Malubesang. The tea plantations are along the slopes of the mountains, and we do have some of the fertile valley lands, but the valleys are terribly hot in the summer, and then freezing at night, so the raka there aren’t keen to experiment with other kinds of crops.”  
  
“And Hadian is?”  
  
Hadian flashes her a gap-toothed grin. “What’s the worst he can do, kill those fancy new crops of his?”  
  
“Strawberries,” Taybur says, his voice mingling exasperation and affection. To Aly, “I’m trying to see if we can introduce new kinds of crops in Asawang. We’re making enough to get by, but the Mother rages once, and we lose everything, and sometimes, we don’t have enough to make sure everyone gets fed. We’re not Jerykun with the sunset butterflies, but new crops—introduced in small amounts—could make enough of a difference in terms of income, to offer us some resilience.”  
  
Hadian cackles. “And he says these sell for a good amount of coin in Rajmuat. Luarin madness, that.”  
  
Taybur grins. “Possibly,” he admits, wiping away some sweat. His hands leave smears of dirt on his face, and Aly resists the urge to clean that off. “Back when I was in Rajmuat, I found merchants import them at ruinous expense from the Eastern Lands. His fields are at about the right elevation—it’s just cool enough for strawberries, and the soil is worth its weight in gold. If we could get the strawberries planted, we could cut out the middleman—we’d have to go lower, of course, but enough to make a decent profit. Better than tubers.”  
  
Aly considers it. “You’d still have to sell it for a high price, at first,” she points out. “Introducing a new crop doesn’t seem to come cheap.”  
  
Taybur nods. “It doesn’t,” he agrees. “I’m absorbing some of that cost with my pay, but I’m expecting we might make a bit of a loss on the first harvest. What matters is how it turns out in the long run.”  
  
“Why didn’t you go with vineyards?” Aly wonders. She’s been to a few of them, in Tortall: mostly because her Da’s work took him everywhere, and she’d been along in tow. “You say you’ve got good, rich soil, and it seems cool enough for those.”  
  
“That’s what I told him,” Hadian says, smugly. “If you’re going to be fancy, you might as well go all-out and do a vineyard.”  
  
Taybur shakes his head. “Imahyn has a stranglehold on the market for local wines,” he says, tiredly. “Breaking into that market’s going to be hard. If you still want to do wine, and the strawberries are a success, we could think about keeping back some of the harvest for wine. Might be enough of a novelty to stir interest, at any rate.”  
  
It had the air of an unresolved argument, Aly thinks, as she helps them add compost to the soil and prepare for planting. It’s a long day of hard work, and she’s only too glad, in the end, when Taybur calls a halt.  
  


* * *

  
  
"I haven’t drowned in the tub, if that’s what you were wondering," Taybur says, when she drops by to see what's taking him so long to get changed. For the past few minutes, she’s heard nothing—not even the sounds of water.  
  
He's still clad in almost nothing, save for a loincloth, and she admires the rippled expanse of abdominal muscle, interrupted by fine white scars.  
  
Taybur raises an eyebrow. "Like what you see?" he comments, idly.  
  
Aly laughs and flutters her lashes coquettishly. "But of course, my lord," she murmurs, picking up the accent of a village girl from the Lombyn highlands. "I'm always attracted to handsome, strong guards like yourself."  
  
He's still fumbling with an expanse of colourful, dyed cloth, and Aly can't help but let out a snort, breaking character. "Are you seriously struggling with _that?_ The great Taybur Sibigat, defeated by a sarong?"  
  
Taybur's smile is mild and self-deprecating. "I know, I know," he says, "A good luarin boy like me can't figure out how to wear a sarong. I've never had to." There's no bitterness there; just good humour.   
  
"Give," Aly says, and she takes the sarong from him and tugs. "Come here." She has him stand before her, and deftly wraps the sarong about him and shows him how to knot it in place. "There."  
  
She takes it in, belatedly: Chenaol once told her that each of these patterns were unique to a particular region; that they often carried deep meaning, passed down from one generation to the next by the raka. She doesn’t know what this sarong means, only that Fesgao had told her to give it to Taybur.   
  
"So, like this?" Taybur asks, undoing the knot, and doing it again.   
  
"No," she says, correcting him, and steps into his space and slips her hands over his, guiding his fingers. He stiffens at first; a warrior's instinct, but then allows the contact. The knot slides in place, as Taybur says, "Oh," in understanding.  
  
They stand like this for a long moment; the warmth of his broadly-muscled chest against her back, her fingers gently resting in his. And then Aly steps away, tugs lightly to free her hands.  
  
"Get Fahan to show you, if you're still having trouble," she suggests, too matter-of-factly, naming Taybur's second: a raka who had been elevated to the King's Guard alongside Taybur, back when Captain Duipang had first been executed.  
  
Taybur nods, frowning down at the sarong; at his hands. "I will," he says, absently. "But I think I've got the measure of it now, though." He flashes a grin at her - boyish, with those dark curls, like sunlight breaking through the clouds, chasing away the dark grimness of the past days. "After all, I had a good teacher."  
  


* * *

  
  
Instead of the fields, Taybur seems happy enough to play tour guide on the next day, taking her to see the tea plantations along the slopes of the mountains. The largest of them all looms in the distance, a thick, grey plume issuing from the summit today: the volcano Kulang, from which the island gets its name.  
  
She notices, with a spymaster’s observational skills, that neither Taybur nor any of the raka—and there are a number of slaves at the plantations, both raka and luarin, and she doesn’t know whether or not to feel disappointed—refer to the volcano as Kulang. “The Mother rages,” Taybur had said, on the previous say, and the raka make a sign that Aly memorises but does not recognise whenever they refer to the volcano, or even when they glance at the distinctive form of the volcano.  
  
“The Mother is flat at the top,” Taybur explains to her. He isn’t breathing heavily as they climb the plantation slopes, which means he’s been keeping in good physical shape, all this while. “Like a shield. There’s a huge crater, with a lake of lava—it’s been there for as long as the raka can remember, although the level of the lake shifts at times.”  
  
Aly looks out towards the volcano. “Why do you call her the Mother?” she asks, at last. There’s a nagging feeling—that she should know this—except that nothing comes to mind, not immediately.  
  
Taybur blinks, and then says, “I forget you haven’t been here long. The raka don’t like to refer to volcanoes by name. The Mother was named Kulang by luarin surveyors, who were horrified to discover that the raka here hadn’t given the volcano any name worth putting on a map.” His lips twisted in a wry smile. “Volcanoes are—were—sacred to Gunapi the Sunrose, goddess of war and molten rock. Raka don’t name volcanoes, out of reverence for the Sunrose, and the Mother used to be a major site of worship. There’s a shrine to Gunapi the Sunrose at the crater, and they still pray there, even today. Even now that she can no longer hear them.”  
  
“And you don’t?”  
  
Taybur looks at her. “I’m Mithran, remember? There’s a temple of Mithros too. They get along just fine.”  
  
Aly isn’t sure about that: she remembers just fine Kyprioth’s war against the Great Mother Goddess and Mithros, but as she’s probably on thin ice with the two gods at the moment, she’d really rather not invoke them or draw their attention in any way.  
  


* * *

  
  
Aly watches, and notices all the small things: the wooden posts placed at regular intervals in all fields and villages and roads and plantations, carefully worked to depict twining roses, bristling with thorns—and this time, with her Sight, she notices this—and a flaming ball that appears to be a depiction of the sun.  
  
It’s the same motif from the table in the dining room, she realises, and now she puts a name to it: Gunapi the Sunrose, revered all over Asawang (and she must assume, Kulanggung) in loving woodwork, silent for the long years since the defeat of the raka pantheon at the hands of Mithros and the Great Mother Goddess.  
  
This, too, she wonders: how many of the old gods were defeated and captured? Were there any gods in the land that would one day become Tortall, perhaps when the Bazhir fled from what would one day become Carthak to the Great Southern Desert?  
  
She talks Taybur into making the ascent to the summit of Kulang, and for all she thought she’d become accustomed to altitude from her time in Tanair, her legs and lungs still burn by the time they reach the lip of the crater. There, her lungs burn for a different reason: the plume of gas is powerful, noxious, and Aly’s eyes water.  
  
She almost trips, as she makes her way along the lip of the large crater: the ground is unstable, and Taybur reaches out, and catches hold of her. “Be careful,” Taybur murmurs, concerned, but he doesn’t let go, and—she will admit this—she’s not sure she wants him to.  
  
He steadies her, and only after a long moment, Taybur releases his grip. “I came here when I was a boy, with my brothers,” he says, almost conversationally. “The ground can be fairly unstable.”   
  
This does surprise her; she pauses, and looks over at him. “You have brothers?”  
  
“Had,” Taybur says. There’s finality, warring with bitterness, in his voice. “Why do you think the regents picked me?”   
  
“I figured it was because you were from Asawang,” Aly says, repeating her reasoning about the regents favouring someone who would be appropriately grateful.  
  
Taybur’s smile is crooked. “Oh, of course,” he murmurs. “They did in fact want a political non-entity, and Asawang is as close to that as you can get. But I was also the third son of the Baron, which meant I was as far from inheritance as they could reasonably expect.”  
  
“What happened?” Aly asks, quietly.  
  
Taybur looks out, at the crater, at the plume of volcanic gas. “What else?” he says, his voice just as soft. “The Mother raged. It happens on Kulanggung, too many times. We rebuilt. They all died. I was in Rajmuat, then. It happened a month after I took over the King’s Guard. I still make offerings for them before Divine Mithros’s altar and the shrine here.”  
  
He’d been carrying wildflowers, Aly’d noticed earlier. She hadn’t asked why.  
  
“And Dunevon?”  
  
That sorrow, again; like the flash of a knife. “Always,” Taybur says, simply. Nothing more.  
  


* * *

  
  
They negotiate the rim of the crater carefully, steadying each other on patches of crumbling rock. The floor of the crater is warm—Aly can feel it, even through the leather of her boots. Inside are barren fields of grey basalt, with smoke issuing through volcanic vents, and the occasional stubborn pine, struggling for life in the crater.  
  
The lake of lava is in a smaller crater, and Taybur guides them there in a silence punctuated only by the occasional call of birds flying overhead. The shrine to Gunapi the Sunrose is at the rim of that smaller crater; fashioned, Aly realises, of the grey volcanic rock.  
  
Occupying a position of prominence in the shrine is a statue of a stylised warrior woman, wielding a spear in one hand and wearing a crown of thorns and roses. Aly can’t decide if her expression is meant to be serene or fierce; protective or cruel. Perhaps she’s meant to be all of them: if there’s anything Aly has learned about gods from Kyprioth, it’s that they can’t fit very well into human moulds.  
  
Kyprioth thought nothing of having a boy killed in order for his prophecy to come to fruition. And Mithros and the Great Mother Goddess presided over the bloody, cruel oppression of the raka, especially in the early days of conquest.  
  
The gods wear more than one face, one of her Da’s best operatives had once said, and now, Aly knows what he means.   
  
Taybur lays down the wildflowers, alongside the other offerings piled respectfully at the base of the statue. Aly sees fresh flowers and dried flowers; some wilting already, offerings of fruit and tubers and vegetables and seashells and woodwork and she understands, really _understands_ what Taybur has meant.  
  
Gunapi the Sunrose is gone; vanished, defeated. But in the long centuries of her silence; in the long, forgetful centuries of luarin conquest, the raka have not forgotten. They’ve never forgotten, and with the same dedication of the raka conspiracy, the raka here on Kulanggung have steadily climbed the Mother in order to make offerings at the shrine of a goddess who no longer speaks or listens to her children.  
  
 _She was beautiful, and fierce, and proud, strong_ , says a voice Aly knows only too well. _As were we all._  
  
“Bright One?” she whispers, even though she really shouldn’t, it’ll just feed his ego, and then he’ll be absolutely unbearable, as if he isn’t already.  
  
But there is no reply; Kyprioth’s attention has shifted elsewhere. Or he simply lost interest.  
  
Aly shivers.  
  
Taybur glances over at her. “Are you all right?”  
  
Aly nods, glad that for this intrusion of normalcy. “I’m in the mood to steal a herd of royal kudarung,” she quips, and Taybur’s laugh rings out across the crater.  
  
“Just as well there’s none here for you to steal,” Taybur retorts. “Otherwise, I’d never finish explaining exactly what happened to the Queen.”  
  


* * *

  
  
They descend sometime after dusk, with the lake of fire behind them, casting an eerie scarlet glow on the walls of the crater. Aly has come prepared for this eventuality, but it’s nice to see Taybur produce a lantern from his pack, all the same, and kindle it with flint and steel.  
  
His first few attempts die out, due to the cold wind, but Aly shields it with her hands, and eventually, Taybur lights the lantern.  
  
“I used to be better at this,” he says, ruefully, stowing the flint and steel back into his pack. “I suppose I’m out of practice.”  
  
“Rajmuat turned you into a city boy,” Aly teases.  
  
“It really did,” Taybur says, seriously. His sigh is wistful. “All I did was drill my squad, day in and day out, until we were the most effective and well-disciplined squad in the Rittevon Guard—and probably the Grey Palace. I told them—jokingly—that if I were storming the Grey Palace, I’d want no other men by my side.” He laughs; harsh, bitter. “I never thought we’d actually end up doing that.”  
  
“Fahan chose to remain in the Queen’s Guard,” Aly says. “He’s Fesgao’s second, now—he gives those who swore their oath to Dove a sense of stability.”  
  
“Just Fahan?” Taybur asks, visibly startled.  
  
She nods, lays out her cards on the table. “Your leaving upset them,” Aly informs him. It’s hard to gauge his expression by lantern light, but she does have the Sight to tip things in her favour. Taybur looks both troubled and touched. “And they were already unhappy with the idea they’d turned on the people they’d sworn to protect.”  
  
That must have touched a raw nerve, because Taybur grinds out, “I offered them a choice.” He hesitates. “They didn’t have to do it, if they didn’t want to. All they had to do was to stand by and do nothing. But of course, I was asking it of them. And they joined the Guard because they believed in doing their duty—it would have killed them to be locked into cells when the Grey Palace fell.”  
  
“Would you have done it, if we hadn’t been marching on the palace?”   
  
It’s something that she’s wondered about: something she doesn’t know well enough to assess. Would Taybur have eventually turned on the regents, with or without the eventual rebellion? Aly doesn’t like puzzles, and it bothers her that she can’t seem to piece this one together.  
  
“Maybe,” Taybur says. It’s an evasive answer, and Aly gives him a sharp look, but his distant expression doesn’t change, and she’s reminded of the expression on his bowed head as he carried Dunevon home; as he explained to the other parents he could not bring any of their sons safely back. “We’ll never know, now. Would you know where you would be, if you hadn’t come to the Copper Isles?”  
  
“No,” Aly admits. She doesn’t know why she’s honest, even though she still carries that one secret, buried deep in her heart. Taybur knows, of course, that she’s not Aly Homewood. He’d known, and he simply hadn’t cared. He doesn’t know, though, that she’s Alianne Cooper of Pirate’s Swoop. In a way, she _likes_ it that he doesn’t know. Would he look at her differently, if he knew who she was?  
  
It bothers her, that thought.  
  
“Well, then,” Taybur says. He draws to a halt here, with the shadow of the volcano and the mountains about them, and the welcoming light of village-fires in the distant darkness. The light from the lantern half-shrouds his boyish features. “What did you come for, _really?_ ” There’s steel in his voice now.  
  
“I told you,” Aly says. “Maybe I just felt like paying you a visit.”  
  
Taybur shakes his head. “Enough of the story about stealing the royal kudarung,” he says, and she’s reminded of that day so long ago, when he cut through her protestations and told her there was no Aly Homewood but he didn’t care who she was as long as she didn’t interfere with Dunevon. “Enough games.”  
  
But it is a game, all of it, and Aly isn’t sure if she should be disappointed that he hasn’t seen it.   
  
Taybur continues talking. So she lets him. “I thought about it, you know. Maybe you came to assess if Asawang remained loyal to the Queen. Well, we have. We’re too busy trying to recover from the Mother’s last rage. Or maybe you came to recruit some of my people, in which case, you’re welcome to do so.”  
  
She steps up to him, beneath the lights of the starry sky, beneath the constellations so familiar and so strange at the same time, and draws him to her. “None of them,” Aly says, quietly, firmly. Because sometimes the only move you can make is to lay your cards on the table. “There have been thirty-five assassination attempts on Dove in the past months. Thirty-five.”  
  
His eyes gleam. He understands, of course. “You said you were giving me a choice,” he murmurs, and this close, pressed up against him, Aly rejoices in his warmth, in his strength, in the scent of sulphur and smoke and brimstone.  
  
“I know,” she whispers, and closes her eyes. “I lied.”  
  
“They need me.”  
  
She thinks of the fields, to be planted with strawberries, and the quiescent simmering threat of the Mother; of stalks of grass swaying white-plumed in the wind and the glittering jewel of the sea and the pale shadow of the distant hills in the sunlight and Taybur’s laugh.  
  
“I know,” Aly whispers. She feels like scum, but Dove needs him _too_ , and she’s tired of this, sometimes, and maybe she understands what her Ma means, with all this talk of affairs of state. In a game, someone always wins, and someone always loses. “Dove needs you too. Maybe more. Fesgao’s a general, not a bodyguard.”  
  
His hand runs lightly along her jaw. “I’d thought you’d come to poach Ari. I think I’d almost have preferred it if you had.”  
  
Aly laughs. “So, will you?”  
  
He studies her, his dark eyes inscrutable, but Taybur Sibigat does not say anything at all.  
  


* * *

  
  
It is the night before her last day on Asawang; before she’ll return, as the kudarung flies, to the garish, colourful bustle of Rajmuat, to the plots and troubles surrounding Dove and the brave new world they’re trying to build on the ruins of the old.  
  
Aly packs; she hasn’t brought much, and everything goes back into her pack easily. She looks out the window, occasionally, but it’s too dark to see much of the usual view of Asawang.  
  
A light knock on her door.  
  
Taybur emerges, a tall, well-muscled figure, from the shadows. He says, “I saw your light.” The candle, burning on the study-table. She’s written a few reports in code—these will need to be delivered on her way back to Rajmuat.  
  
They stand there—or at least, Taybur does; Aly sits on her soft bed—in an edged silence. Eventually, Taybur turns to leave. She stops him with a single word.  
  
“Wait,” Aly says.  
  
He turns.  
  


* * *

  
  
The wind stirs the long grasses; the blades of lalang bend, burning a faint, regretful amber in the light of the setting sun.  
  
“My brothers and I used to play here,” Taybur says, his gaze distant. “We used to play hide-and-seek, or go swimming in the lake. It exasperated our nurse to no end.” That last statement is punctuated by his boyish smile; she can imagine a young Taybur, then, laughing and running among the stalks of grass.  
  
“I grew up by the ocean,” Aly says, in spite of herself. But enough of Tortall borders the coasts: enough, that Taybur doesn’t grow suspicious; that he doesn’t ask once again, about Aly Homewood. “My brothers and I used to play by the cliffs and the shore.”  
  
It’d driven Ma wild too, when Aly’d broken her leg in an ill-advised scramble up a cliff.  
  
“How many?”  
  
“Two,” Aly says. “I wasn’t the youngest.”  
  
“You’d think I got away with everything,” Taybur says, seriously. He grins at her. “I didn’t. Not all the time, anyway. I was the responsible one.”  
  
“I thought you said you could never sit still,” Aly pokes, mischievously.  
  
Taybur raises an eyebrow. “Can’t both be true at the same time?” he wants to know. “I was the responsible one. I was also the restless one.”  
  
“And look at you now,” Aly teases. “Putting down roots and working the land.”  
  
He looks away. “I have a responsibility,” Taybur says, quietly. “You know that. There’s no one else left. They’re all dead, now. I’m the only one left.”  
  
“I know,” Aly says. Slowly at first, she presses her lips to his. He doesn’t push her away; in fact, he pulls her close against him, deeping the kiss.  
  
“Come with me,” she whispers, in spite of herself.  
  
Overhead, in the cracked azure sky, she hears the distant caw of a crow.

**Author's Note:**

> Done for a fic exchange on Goldenlake. Also heavily inspired by Sting's Fields of Gold.


End file.
